My Insufferable Arrogance

The problem for me was never what was happening to me.

It was always the thought that it “shouldn’t” be happening. I was too smart, too charming, too brilliant, too something for this to happen to me. How can this be happening to me? I did everything I was “supposed” to do. Get an education, get a job, get experience, work abroad, get another degree, work some more…. Maybe get a PhD…

This is an experience.

I sometimes think what you write about myself too.

I have begun to live a life I didn’t anticipate.

I thought I would be a hard-nosed businesswoman.

I thought I would be childless.

I live in a city which, along with Oslo, is Europe’s biggest village. I know many of the people when I walk around here.

I have three children.

I am alive.

I can write, I can sew, I can talk and best of all, I am healthy.

I eat fantastic food.

Nothing is what I thought it would be or what I imagined it to be.

I’ve been hired. I’ve been fired.

I’ve applied for countless jobs.

I have interviewed job hunters and been forced to give the job to a person who wasn’t my choice because the company didn’t want to fire her from a company they’d acquired.

My life has purpose.

Right now, that purpose is being there for my children. It’s fun.

They are helpful and polite and smart.

Just being home with them is significant. I want them to feel secure.

For many years I had a different mission. A way that I could help people turn their lives around.

I’d you look hard enough for it, you may find a purpose too.

Those voices in my head were trying to tell me something.

Meditation helped me to find those voices and listen to them until they ran out of steam and I found peace.

I am an artist.

I know that now.

I have a unique message for the world and so do you.

When my friends get fired I can hold their hands through it.

My trials have given me sympathy for others.

This happened to me too.

When a young mother tells me that she can’t take it anymore I can tell her that I know what she means. I can tell her that I woke up one night to nurse my infant son and I had what I call a “primal scream” experience. I began howling from the depths of my soul. My husband-at-the-time didn’t know what was going on. Neither did I. It’s okay to be frightened and confused.

Dearest Annalea, your experience has VALUE. Did you notice the recommends flooding in? Your suffering has purpose. Sharing it here serves a greater purpose, that of one human being talking to another, no filter.

I sense your humanity. I feel your ache of not being enough. Maybe that’s not what you wrote but it’s what I heard.

I was a smart kid. Everybody had high expectations for me. They said I had the brains of the family.

I’ve gotten a couple of prestigious academic degrees, had great earning power then spent a fortune in my free time to feel good about the work I was doing.

Nothing in my adult life has given me as much joy as my sewing machine. Who would have thought it of the mechanical engineer and MBA graduate?

There is actually a tie-in; the glorious mechanics of the machine so maybe it’s not such a u-turn after all.

Monday I start work at a sewing machine shop.

I could choose to feel humiliated and demeaned and I do sometimes but mostly I am thrilled to get a chance to do what I love.

Thanks again for sharing your humanity with me.

I appreciate it deeply.